Please pass on this opportunity. If your heart is in the right place, find a company that actually respects you.
Pros
THE PEOPLE - This is the one thing that IXL excels in. The employees I've had the pleasure to work with are some of the kindest, smartest, and caring people I've met, and I've formed lasting friendships with many of them. If there's a reason to weather this storm of a company, it's for the genuinely awesome coworkers who are along for the ride with you. MISSION - IXL is an education company, so it attracts people that care about teaching and learning. It's nice to go home at the end of the day and know that your work is benefitting students, teachers, parents, and adult learners around the world; it's something to be proud of. (Caveat: the company knows that its employees are driven by this mission, and can use this to its advantage)
Cons
Caution: Be wary of 5 star reviews written by recent hires. SENIOR MANAGEMENT - Major pivots in product direction, operations, and hiring roadmaps have occurred in the past year. Some of these pivots have come after months or even years of employees' time and company funds, with the result that many employees have never seen their work released. - All product decisions at the company must be approved by the CEO and/or COO; this seriously undermines trust in the competencies of other managers, slows development, and stifles creativity. - Despite an almost company-wide desire to improve inclusion in our product, upper management is hesitant to address the subject. Many of the strongest advocates for inclusion have been let go (for one reason or another). STABILITY - Team reorganizations and large layoffs are the new norm for IXL in 2018/19, and more experienced (aka higher-salaried) individual contributors seem to consistently be the first to go. Burning bridges with talented and loyal employees has fostered a toxic company culture, and it may be too late to reverse this. - There is little transparency regarding product direction and motivations for high impact decisions. The future of the company is difficult to predict. - Several teams are facing significant retention issues (close to half the team members leaving), and senior management doesn't seem to care. CAREER OPPORTUNITIES - Product management, UI/UX design, and engineering roles at IXL are niche, and their responsibilities are quite different from what they would be at most other technology companies (at least in the Bay Area). In other words, don't expect your skills to necessarily transfer over to other jobs. - Despite being a mid-sized company that's been around since the 90s, IXL is very late to adopt industry-standard technologies. We only recently made the switch from FogBugz/Manuscript and Subversion to Jira and Git, and we were slow to start using React, and Agile. - Most development teams have a high composition of new grads, and there are not enough senior team members to support them.
